On Friday morning while on my way to attend a meeting in a neighboring town I counted almost two dozen sightseeing buses making their way along the southern shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. (You can see a wide expanse of foliage on the opposite shore and covering the mountains on the north side of the lake, with reflections from the water enhancing the effect.)
I don't mind seeing the leaf peepers as they're only here for a week or two, tops, leaving millions of dollars behind them when they leave. They generally aren't annoying like 'summah people' (not to be confused with summerfolk). They love being here. They aren't overly demanding. They go home.
**************
I've thought right from the get go that bringing Ebola patients back to the US for treatment wasn't necessarily a good idea. That a US health care worker has apparently been infected with Ebola while taking care of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas. Despite all of the precautions taken, a nurse has been diagnosed with Ebola.Frankly, that it is happening, both here and in Africa, tells me the precautions being taken aren't enough. Either there has been a breakdown in the procedures being used to prevent infection or the means of transmission has shifted. Of the two, the second is the scariest because if there's a new means of infection we're unaware of this could easily spread despite our best efforts.
**************
With ISIS making gains in Syria, threatening to overrun yet another town near the Turkish border, it has become apparent the air campaign isn't the solution to the problem.As the military has been saying again and again, the only way to deal with ISIS is on the ground, meaning boots on the ground. Anyone with any understanding of military history understands this. You can't win a ground war from the air.
I must back up a little bit to clarify one point. It is possible to win a ground war from the air, but the means of doing so is brutal and the cost in human lives very high: bomb every stronghold, every village, town, and city to rubble, and then bomb it again, then again. Kill every living being in the area. Leave no stone standing upon stone. Leave nothing and no one alive. But that means killing all the innocents along with the ISIS combatants. Are we willing to do that? Or should we get boots on the ground and dig 'em out street by street and house by house?
I have a feeling that at some point (after the election) the President is going to come to that conclusion and we'll be sending our men and women yet again into harm's way.
**************
The OECD has found that my home state of New Hampshire is the safest state to live in, with one of the reasons being its low crime rate. Then again, many Granite Staters are armed and know how to use their firearms.**************
I have been trying to stay away from our local TV channels because the deluge of campaign ads have gotten worse, something I thought was impossible. These days we DVR everything we want to watch and then skip through the ads.Most regular TV ads are OK, but the campaign ads are annoying, condescending, outright lies, distortions, and..umm...annoying. (Yes, I know I listed annoying twice, but that's how bad they are.)
November 4th can't get here soon enough.
**************
Yeah, like this was a bright idea.If this 17-year old idiot had damaged the quarterback's vision one has to wonder if his parents would have to sell everything they own to pay off the damages from a lawsuit? Then again, not too many 17-year olds think about the consequences of their actions, do they?
**************
This is my kind of salad!**************
Smitty delves into the Lefty worldview. It all boils down to this:(a) You are stupid meat.How long before they “fire up the ovens and kick in some doors”?
(b) You can be controlled by hormonal appeal.
(c) If not (a) or (b), you must be silenced.
(d) Because #Power.
As one commenter opined, “Look at what they do and how they live, not at what they say and you can never go wrong.”
Indeed.
**************
Two Austrian teen girls who decided to join ISIS have found out it's not all fun and games. Now they're stuck in Syria, married, pregnant, and under the control of extremist Muslims who will have no problems beheading them once their children are born and weaned because they want to abandon their husbands and return to Austria.As they're learning, actions have consequences, particularly actions that have no thought or knowledge behind them.
**************
The Warmists are still claiming AGW will cause all kinds of extreme weather and that it already has. Too bad NOAA has demolished that claim with, of all things, actual data showing just the opposite has been occurring.Don't worry. I'm sure the warmists will come up with an explanation, just like they've been explaining the the now 18 year+ pause in global warming.
**************
The A/C units were pulled out of the windows in The Manse, a next-to-the-last concession that the warm weather is pretty much done for the year. The last concession will be when I pull the screens from the storm doors and replace them with the glass. I figure that day will come soon enough.**************
While many Democrats keep trying to push the idea that Obamacare is “working”, a Gallup poll shows nearly half of Americans believe it will make health care worse in the long run.Once the employer mandate kicks in after the first of the year, I expect those numbers to climb. We haven't seen anywhere near the pain Obamacare is going to inflict on the American public, and once the employer mandate kicks in, everyone will know for sure Obamacare was a godawful law and will, like Prohibition, push for its repeal.
(H/T Viking Pundit)